Poetic Enlightenment

'The essays in this ambitious volume collectively argue that poetry and Enlightenment are entangled at every point in eighteenth-century British culture. A distinguished sequence of chapters mounts a convincing cumulative challenge to the idea that the Enlightenment was an age of prose. The Poetic Enlightenment promises to reorientate critical approaches to eighteenth-century thought and poetry in relation to the comprehensive aim to develop a 'Science' of human life in all its aspects.' Susan Manning, University of Edinburgh 'The Poetic Enlightenment gathers together essays from an outstanding group of scholars on the importance of poetry for Enlightenment thinkers. These essays brilliantly demonstrate in a variety of ways why we need to think much harder about the resources of poetry as a form of knowing, both in our own contemporaneity and historically with reference to the many discourses of knowledge that comprise Enlightenment. The collection as a whole will make a significant contribution to our re-enlightenment.' Peter de Bolla, University of Cambridge

• Chapter 1 General Introduction, Tom Jones, Rowan Boyson; Chapter 1a Introduction to Part I: Poetic Knowledge and the Knowledge of Poetry, Avi Lifschitz; Chapter 2 Samuel Johnson and the ‘Science’ of Literary Criticism, Nicholas Hudson; Chapter 3 Prosody, Knowledge and Humanity in Enlightenment Language Science, Tom Jones; Chapter 4 Ferguson’s School for Literature, Stefan H. Uhlig; Chapter 5 Introduction to Part II: Poetic Theories of the Social Self, Christopher J. Berry; Chapter 6 Hobbes and Davenant: Poetry as Civil Science, Philip Connell; Chapter 7 Facing the Misery of Others: Pity, Pleasure and Tragedy in Scottish Enlightenment Moral Philosophy, Christian Maurer; Chapter 8 Poetical Stoical Shaftesbury, Rowan Boyson; Chapter 9 Morality as a Discourse of the Imagination, Christopher Tilmouth; Chapter 10 Introduction to Part III: Enlightenment and Romantic Poetologies: Poetry and/or Enlightenment, Maureen N. McLane; Chapter 11 James Thomson’s Seasons and the Transformative Potential of Poetry in the Early Scottish Enlightenment, Pierre Carboni; Chapter 12 ‘Furnishing Light’: Wordsworth, Poetry and the Science of Man in Enlightenment Scotland, Catherine Packham; Chapter 13 Wordsworth, Kant, Fanaticism and Humanity, Simon Swift;